Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Groans at Home Re: (Cheney Joke Here)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - What do you do when the vice president shoots someone?

That was the question the White House grappled uncertainly with on Monday, after Dick Cheney made history as the second vice president to fire a gun at someone -- though accidentally in this case -- while in office. By the end of a bizarre day in Washington, with only Aaron Burr as a precedent and the late-night comedians and Cheney Internet shooting games going at it full force, the only answer for the White House seemed to be to run for cover.

"You can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said in what by this White House's standards was a forthright admission that it had been a rough couple of days.

Even Mr. Cheney's most loyal friends could only brace themselves for the one-liners to come.

"Dick Cheney is one of the most skilled shots I know, and they'll make fun of it forever," said Alan K. Simpson, a former Wyoming senator who is a longtime friend and sometime hunting partner of the vice president.

He seemed to be right.

"Something I just found out today about the incident," Jay Leno said Monday on the "Tonight Show" on NBC. "Do you know that Dick Cheney tortured the guy for a half-hour before he shot him?"

Aside from Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old Texas lawyer who was in stable condition after being peppered with shotgun pellets by Mr. Cheney, the person who had the worst time on Monday was Mr. McClellan.

In one of two raucous news briefings, Mr. McClellan told reporters that he first learned in a 6 a.m. phone call on Sunday -- some 12 hours after the accident -- that Mr. Cheney had sprayed Mr. Whittington with his shotgun. Mr. McClellan said he had urged the vice president's office to get the information out "as quickly as possible."

But Mr. Cheney's office does not appear to have taken that advice. Instead, the vice president told the nation of the incident via Katharine Armstrong, a member of the hunting party and an owner of the Texas ranch where the accident occurred.

On Sunday morning, Ms. Armstrong called her local newspaper, The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and informed it of the shooting.

Mr. Cheney's office took some questions from reporters Sunday night but did not release a statement about the accident. It was left to Mr. McClellan to handle the White House press corps Monday morning, and things did not go especially well.

Just minutes into Mr. McClellan's early briefing, the press secretary was in a verbal brawl with David Gregory of NBC, who repeatedly asked why the press corps did not learn of the Saturday shooting, which took place at 5:30 p.m. Central time, for nearly 24 hours. Mr. McClellan responded that Ms. Armstrong had informed the press corps through her local newspaper.

Mr. McClellan's second, on-camera briefing was a bit less heated, although it was dominated by questions about when the president first learned that Mr. Cheney had peppered Mr. Whittington with pellets. Mr. McClellan could not say for certain, although he did say that Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, had informed Mr. Bush about an accident involving Mr. Cheney's hunting party on Saturday night.

Later, the briefing produced one of the more surreal e-mail messages from this White House in its five-year history. Around 4:40 p.m., the press office dispatched a clarification to reporters, titled "Response to a Question From the Briefing," which began, "Q: So when did the president definitively know that the vice president had shot somebody?"

The answer given was that Mr. Card had called to tell the president about the accident at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, without knowing of Mr. Cheney's involvement, and that Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, had then spoken to Ms. Armstrong. Mr. Rove, the e-mail message said, "then called the president shortly before 8 p.m. E.S.T. to update him and let him know the vice president had accidentally shot Mr. Whittington."

Pictures of Mr. Cheney accompanied by hunting puns appeared on television all day Monday. CNN ran a photograph of a stern-looking Mr. Cheney alongside a picture of three quail under the headline "Friendly Fire." Later, it changed the headline to "Cheney's Fowl Shot."

Mr. Simpson, for one, said he was outraged by the media frenzy, and blamed Mr. Whittington for not announcing that he was coming up behind Mr. Cheney in the field, which is protocol.

"When it's all through after a few days, people are going to laugh at the media for their overreaction," Mr. Simpson said in an interview from his home in Wyoming. "This is a hunting accident, created by the victim. Dick Cheney didn't do anything. He's a master hunter. And they're portraying him as some sort of assassin. I mean the headline I saw today was 'Cheney Bags Lawyer.' "

The shooting was fertile ground for Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show," the popular fake news program on Comedy Central. On Monday night one of the show's correspondents, Rob Corddry, introduced as a "vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst," said that "according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush," and "everyone believed there were quail in the brush," and "while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he would still have shot Mr. Whittington in the face."

On July 11, 1804, Vice President Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, N.J. Hamilton died of his wounds the next day.

John Files contributed reporting for this article.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2006, on Page A00016 of the National edition with the headline: White House Memo; Groans at Home Re: (Cheney Joke Here). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe